Last time we had tinned confit duck, a few months ago, I kept the spare fat and strained it into a Kilner jar. I kept it in the fridge.
When I came to about halfway down the jar, there were little specks of what appeared to be mould. I presume these were tiny morsels of duck, and that I hadn’t heated the fat to a high enough temperature before storing to sterilise them.
What temperature should I have ensured the fat reached?
Would freezing it have been better? Given that you say “a few months ago”?
Never heard of sterilizing duck fat.
Personally, I remove as much fat as I can as soon as I open the tin. That fat is already cold and gets put into a small container and goes straight into the freezer. Keeps for months. (ice-cube moulds are excellent for this sort of thing and the frozen cubes are handy to measure out).
The remaining fat melts during the reheating of the duck portions and this fat gets strained into a ramekin to cool down and then stays briefly in the fridge. As this fat has already been heated more than once, I use it asap …
never had any problems
Thank you, ladies. Freezing sounds like a good idea.
I make confit de canard every third week and have been doing it for over ten years, so have produced quite a lot of melted duck fat and concentrated duck jelly. I pour the fat into clean sterilised jars and freeze the jelly. No need to freeze the fat as it keeps well in the fridge for months .
Your mold is probably due to a minute amount of moisture.
That was my thought also, needed heating to evaporate any remaining water or trapped particles that could be skimmed off? Rendering, that was the term I was thinking of
Theres usually coarse ground pepper and other seasonings in the tin. They can get into the fat and be suspended in a layer part way down the fat. That’s what I see and you can se it in the melted fat when you cool it. Are you sure it’s mold ? You can get mould if you get any water, even just a drop or two, on the top of the fat.
I read the title too quickly and thought, “not another Trump thread?”
Or alternatively the closure of Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant……….fat duck failure
I will look again, but I’m pretty sure it had a greenish tinge
It sounds like there were probably a few tiny bits of duck left in the fat. If those aren’t fully strained out, they can sometimes cause mold to form after a while, even in the fridge. Usually it helps to heat the fat until it’s properly melted and quite hot, then strain it well before storing it in a clean jar.
Even then, if you see mold or anything unusual, it’s generally safer to just throw it out and start fresh.